[ BUSINESS BRIEFS ]

Staff writer, with agencies

Wed, Nov 07, 2012 - Page 14

The TAIEX staged a rebound from a pullback seen a day earlier, but turnover remained low as investors were cautious ahead of the US presidential election, dealers said.

Buying focused on select high-tech stocks and the financial sector, which they saw as having relatively low valuations after a recent slump, they said.

The weighted index closed up 51.32 points, or 0.71 percent, at the day’s high of 7,236.68, off an early low of 7,165.58, on turnover of NT$56.85 billion (US$1.95 billion).

In trading yesterday, the machinery and electronics sector scored the highest gains among the eight major sectors of the market, finishing up 0.84 percent.

Slight ‘optimism’ on IC sector

The Industrial Technology Research Institute (工研院) said it is “cautiously optimistic” about the prospects for Taiwan’s integrated circuit (IC) industry next year, predicting the sector’s production value will increase 5.6 percent to NT$1.72 trillion.

The sector’s output for this year is likely to reach NT$1.63 trillion, up 4.3 percent from last year, according to a report released by the institute’s Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center.

In the first three quarters of this year, Taiwan’s top 20 IC companies generated NT$1.24 trillion in total revenue, up 5 percent from the year-earlier level, the center said.

The revenue of the top 20 IC companies accounted for 84 percent of that of the overall industry, and their 5 percent growth was higher than the average 2 percent growth industry-wide, the center said.

Expert touts Taiwan for GNSS

The Asia-Pacific region has become a key area in the production of global navigation satellite system (GNSS) chipsets and Taiwan is well-poised to work with the EU in this field, a visiting European expert said yesterday.

Justyna Redelkiewicz Musial, a market development project officer at the European GNSS Agency, said the Asia-Pacific region is currently the largest producer of navigation chipsets, accounting for 34 percent of global shipments.

The figure is higher than the 25 percent from Europe and the 28 percent from North America, she said at a workshop in Taipei to promote EU-Taiwan industrial partnerships in the GNSS downstream sector.

Musial said global shipments of GNSS chipsets are forecast to increase by 21.7 percent in the Asia-Pacific region by 2017, while global shipments of GNSS-enabled devices are likely to exceed 1 billion units by 2020.

LCD shipments to decline

Global shipments of LCD monitors are expected to decline by 2.8 percent next year from this year to 165 million units, flat screen research institute WitsView said on Monday.

Shipments of regular LCD monitors are expected to drop by 3.7 percent next year from this year to 151 million units, while shipments of all-in-one PC panels are expected to increase by 8.1 percent to 14 million units, said WitsView, the display research division of TrendForce Corp (集邦科技).

The gloomy forecast is partly due to growing competition from the tablet and smartphone markets, which is piling pressure on the LCD-reliant PC market, WitsView said. In addition, the rising popularity of ultrabook laptops also threatens to shrink the market share of traditional desktop PCs, it added.

NT dollar gains on greenback

The New Taiwan dollar gained ground against the US dollar yesterday, adding NT$0.03 to close at NT$29.275.